ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 526
Itamar Sharon is a news editor at The Times of Israel
Israel is marking the annual Memorial Day for fallen servicemen as well as civilian casualties of wars and terrorism.
The Times of Israel is liveblogging the news as it unfolds.
An Israeli-Arab man who rammed his car into Jewish pedestrians in Jerusalem last week, killing one and seriously injuring another, confesses that the incident was a deliberate attack, the Shin Bet security service says.
Khaled Koutineh’s lawyer and family initially maintained that the incident was an accidental crash and not a deliberate attack.
Police escort Israeli Arab Khaled Koutineh, who rammed his car into Jewish pedestrians, to a hearing at the Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem, April 16, 2015. (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
However, the Shin Bet adds that, during questioning, Koutineh confessed that he carried out the attack after making a spur-of-the-moment decision to target Israeli Jews with his car.
He told Shin Bet interrogators that he suffers from mental health problems and had feigned insanity during a psychological assessment after his arrest. The Israel Police say that the psychological assessment found Koutineh fit to stand trial.
— Stuart Winer
An Israeli plane makes an emergency landing in Israel amid fears that one of its tires was damaged, causing authorities to turn the flight around and order it back to the ground.
The drama started shortly after routine flight 2521 to Prague by El Al’s budget carrier Up! took off from runway 24 on a Boeing 737 aircraft carrying 181 passengers and crew.
With the plane already in the air, officials found peeled pieces of tire on the tarmac and decided to recall the aircraft to Ben Gurion Airport in order to repair the damage.
Other flights to Israel’s main international hub were put on hold as the damaged plane circled overhead before coming in for a safe landing.
— Stuart Winer
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was seriously wounded in a coalition airstrike in March, the Guardian reports, citing unnamed sources.
According to the report, al-Baghdadi’s life was initially in danger, but he has since been recovering. Due to his condition, al-Baghdadi is not currently making the organization’s day-to-day decisions.
A Western diplomat tells the newspaper the terror group’s leader was hurt in a March 18 airstrike on his convoy in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province.
‘Caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi speaks to Muslims at a mosque in Mosul, Iraq. (screen capture: YouTube)
A former Nazi death camp officer dubbed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” is on trial in Germany, with almost 70 Holocaust survivors and victims’ relatives at the court.
Oskar Groening, 93, is being tried on 300,000 counts of “accessory to murder” for deported Hungarian Jews who were sent to the gas chambers, and faces up to 15 years in jail.
Given the advanced age of most German war crimes suspects, Groening is expected to be among the last to face justice, 70 years after the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of World War II.
Former Nazi death camp officer Oskar Groening (center) and his lawyers Hans Holtermann (right) and Susanne Frangenberg (left) at the opening of Groening’s trial in Lueneburg, Germany, on April 21, 2015 (photo credit: AFP/Ronny Hartmann, Pool)
Eva Fahidi-Pusztai, a Hungarian Auschwitz survivor, tells news channel NTV that “one has always had the feeling that justice has not been served, and so this provides a sense of satisfaction, to some extent.”
— AFP
An Israeli court sentences an Iranian-born Belgian to seven years in prison after convicting him of spying for Tehran.
Ali Mansouri was detained at Ben Gurion Airport in September 2013 carrying photographs of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and other sites, the Shin Bet security service says.
His defense lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, says he does not expect to appeal. “The court heard our arguments, that the security of Israel was not compromised,” Feldman tells reporters.
Ali Mansouri on the Tel Aviv boardwalk near the US Embassy (photo credit: Courtesy Shin Bet)
“It was the Iranian secret services who put pressure on him and his family and we feel that this verdict was rather fair and reasonable in view of the circumstances,” continues Feldman.
— AFP
A new import tax imposed by Hamas on commodities entering the Gaza Strip has local merchants fuming, with some threatening to stop importing food products into the Hamas-controlled Strip altogether.
On Saturday, members of Hamas’s parliamentary bloc Change and Reform approved the National Solidarity Tax law, imposing a new levy on “non-basic” commodities such as meat, fruits and vegetables, clothing, and electronics. Flour and medicine will be exempt from the new tax, Hamas parliament member Ahmad Abu Halbiya tells Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
Abu Halbiya acknowledges that Hamas’s 40,000 employees will be the main recipients of the new tax revenue.
A truck loaded with goods enters the Gaza Strip from Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, March 15, 2015. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
“The civil servants of Gaza haven’t received regular salaries in over a year,” he says. “The Strip cannot function without civil servants, who are the pillar of every state.”
Yet the Gaza merchants remain unconvinced.
“These cost three and a half shekels,” says one merchant in a video report by al-Quds, holding up a pair of slippers he imports. “You want to tax it two shekels? That makes no sense. Make it one or two agorot!”
— Elhanan Miller
The condition of 20-year-old Shira Klein, seriously wounded in last week’s car-ramming attack in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood, has stabilized, Israel Radio reports.
Klein remains in serious condition and is intubated and under sedation at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.
The Shin Bet says the Israeli Arab man who hit Klein as well as 25-year-old Yohai Sherki — who was killed — has confessed to a deliberate attack. Khaled Koutineh’s lawyer and family had previously claimed the ramming was an accident.
Israel is beginning its commemoration of Memorial Day. Here are the main events planned for this evening:
At 5 p.m., Yad Lebanim, an NGO that represents bereaved families of fallen soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, will hold its own ceremony in Jerusalem.
At 8 p.m., a minute-long siren will be heard throughout the country, followed by an official state ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall attended by President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot.
At 8:30 p.m., a tribute event titled “Singing in the Square” will be held in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square in memory of the fallen.
At 9 p.m., the Knesset will hold its annual “Songs for Their Memory” event, in which politicians read excerpts from poems written by and about fallen soldiers and those killed in terror attacks.
The number of Israeli soldiers killed in the line of duty, as well as civilians killed in wars and acts of terror, stands at 23,320, with 116 people added to the list over the past year. Sixty-seven of those were soldiers killed during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge.
The number of bereaved families in Israel stands at 16,760.
The Foreign Ministry honors 16 members of the Foreign Service killed in the line of duty.
"The ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly…" | In memory of the 16 fallen members of Israel's Foreign Service. pic.twitter.com/e2tpWj7IUD
— Israel Foreign Min. (@IsraelMFA) April 21, 2015
Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva is offering to buy Mylan in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $40.1 billion.
The potential combination would result in a powerhouse of a generic drug developer competing against rivals such as Sun Pharma.
Teva headquarters in Har Hotzvim, Jerusalem (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. offered to pay $82 per share, a 21-percent premium to Mylan’s closing price on Monday.
Mylan last week expressed doubts that regulators would approve a deal between Teva and Mylan.
— AP
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says Israel is continuing to make efforts to return the bodies of two IDF soldiers — Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin — who were killed in battle in the Gaza Strip last summer, and whose remains are believed to be held by Hamas.
On Monday night, the family of Shaul said it was being kept in the dark on the progress of efforts to return the bodies. “We have a feeling at the moment that Oron has been forgotten,” his father, Herzl, told Channel 2 News.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Ahead of Memorial Day, Ya’alon paraphrases the Bible in saying Israel’s bereaved families are “the pillar of fire before the camp of Israel” and “a paragon of exceptional human bravery.
“Your choice to live, despite the difficulty that others will never understand, is a symbol and a subject of endless admiration for us all,” Ya’alon says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that “the Jewish people have no future without the State of Israel.”
Speaking at a Memorial Day service at Yad Lebanim, an NGO representing bereaved families, the prime minister adds, “And they have a future — if we agree to safeguard our nation.”
The prime minister tells the gathered families: “The more our enemies threaten to destroy (our) home, the more we are resolved to defend home. The spirit with which we are imbued has not waned over the years and keeps growing stronger.”
Netanyahu adds that this spirit was apparent during Israel’s last war, 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. “What courage, what friendship, what unity, what sacrifice,” he says of the soldiers who fought in those battles.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, April 19, 2015 (photo credit: Flash90/Olivier Fitoussi, Pool)
“When the pain swells and the torment of loss rises up, we shall console ourselves with the fact that (our) sons and daughters fell on a mission nobler than any other — to ensure the existence of our nation,” he says.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein says he has been “deeply moved” by the stories of bereaved families whom he met following last year’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.
“I must confess that, last summer, I went through an experience at the homes of the families of fallen soldiers that rocked me,” Edelstein says at a memorial service at Yad Lebanim, an NGO representing bereaved families.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash 90)
“I was deeply moved to discover their stories, to make a close acquaintance with those precious stones that make up Israel,” he continues.
Edelstein adds: “Time after time we emerge from the fight, bruised, but having gained the upper hand. Neither rockets, nor tunnels, nor terror attacks will weaken this people.”
Former Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening, on trial for his role in the murder of 300,000 people in the concentration camp, is asking for forgiveness.
Groening, 93, tells the District Court of Luneburg on the first day of the trial that “for me, there is no question that I made myself morally complicit.”
Oskar Groening at the first day of his trial in Luneberg, Germany, to face charges of being an accomplice to the murder of 300,000 at Auschwitz, April 21, 2015. (photo credit JTA/Andreas Tamme/Getty Images)
The former Waffen-SS member tells the court that he learned about the gas chambers as soon as he reported for duty at Auschwitz in 1942, the German news agency DPA reports. He admits to gathering the money and valuables found in the baggage of murdered Jews and handing them over to the SS — something he has publicly discussed in interviews over the years.
“I beg for forgiveness,” he says in court, according to news reports. “When it comes to the question of criminal guilt, you must decide.”
— JTA
Further statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Memorial Day service: The premier says the pain of losing his brother Yoni Netanyahu during Operation Entebbe persists to this day.
“Thirty-nine years after my brother fell, the sorrow does not release its grip,” he says. “The sorrow did not release its grip of my parents, may they rest in peace, to their last day. The sorrow does not release its grip on you.
“On this day, the people join us in our sorrow. The people stand tall and bow their heads, lower their flag in gratitude… to the memory of our loved ones who died,” adds Netanyahu.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, reads Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, at the UN Security Council chambers to mark Memorial Day, Army Radio reports.
He says Israel has always been a nation of peace, but when war is forced upon it, it does not back down.
Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/Flash90, Pool)
A spokesperson for the Israel Police tweets a photo of the ceremony honoring fallen policemen at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl.
Police officers salute in respect for fallen policeman at the mount Herzl cemetery. pic.twitter.com/q5UkTfIZHm
— Micky Rosenfeld (@MickyRosenfeld) April 21, 2015
The family of a soldier killed in a Hezbollah attack along the northern border in January says it has not yet received answers from the army on its probe into the incident.
Staff Sergeant Dor Chaim Nini’s family says it hopes officials are not trying to cover up any details of the case, Israel Radio reports.
Staff Sergeant Dor Nini, 20, of Shtulim, killed in a Hezbollah attack, January 28, 2015. (screen capture: Channel 2)
Nini was killed along with Major Yochai Kalangel when an anti-tank missile hit their convoy in the Har Dov region. Questions have been raised in Israel about why the soldiers were traveling in unarmored vehicles in the volatile area during a time of increased tensions with Hezbollah.
The army says the family has not yet received an update on the investigation, as the work is ongoing. The military adds that the families of the two soldiers will be briefed on the findings when they are available.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is calling on Israel to return to peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
While briefing the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, Ban says he hopes the next Israeli government will reaffirm its commitment to a two-state solution and take steps to resume peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
“Over the years, we have seen determined efforts to achieve a comprehensive, negotiated peace based on a two-state solution,” the UN chief says. “Instead of peace, however, there have been decades of missed opportunities and failures that have come at an enormous cost.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attends the opening ceremony of the Second International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria, at Bayan palace in Kuwait City, on March 31,2015. (photo credit: AFP/STR)
Ban also urges the international community to do more “to promote a return to negotiations that will end nearly half a century of occupation and allow two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side in security in peace,” Mr. Ban concluded.
“Both sides face difficult choices. But one choice stands above all: whether to choose peace, or the death, destruction and suffering that has defined the conflict for far too long.”
The parents of IDF soldier Max Steinberg, a southern California native who was killed during the 2014 Gaza war, take part in the Memorial Day ceremony at Beersheba’s Ben-Gurion University.
Steinberg, 24, made aliyah alone and joined the army. He was killed in July 2014 by Hamas explosives while riding in an armored vehicle in Gaza with six other members of the Golani Brigade. He was a sharpshooter in the elite brigade who had enlisted in the army several months after his first visit to Israel on Birthright.
Following his death, Max’s parents Stuart and Evelyn (Evie) teamed up with Ben-Gurion University to set up a scholarship fund in his name, which will be awarded to Golani and other combat reservists at BGU, with a preference to lone soldiers like Max.
Max Steinberg’s parents, Stuart and Evie, at the Los Angeles memorial service for their son, killed in action in Gaza, August 12, 2014. (photo credit: Orly Halevy)
“We are delighted to know that Max’s legacy will be connected to a university and scholarship program that grants opportunity and promise to the soldiers that have put their lives in harm’s way for the people of Israel,” Stuart Steinberg said in February at the program launch.
“We know that Max cared deeply for his fellow soldiers and that he would be wholeheartedly supportive of a program that allows soldiers to pursue their passions and create a great future.”
A one-minute siren is heard throughout the country, signaling the official beginning of Memorial Day.
A state ceremony, attended by President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, is now being held at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.
President Reuven Rivlin (center) and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (left) stand silently during the siren marking the start of Memorial Day, at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, April 21, 2015. (photo credit: Courtesy Channel 2 News)
President Reuven Rivlin opens the official state ceremony for Israel’s Memorial Day at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, saying the people of Israel “insist on surviving because we believe in life.”
Rivlin says, “I’ve learned that the geography of pain crisscrosses Israel, but does not divide it. There is no camp without its dead.”
But the president says it is not enough to survive: to honor the ultimate sacrifices made by the nation’s sons and daughters, Israelis must seek “to deepen our commitment to build a more moral home, a more just home… where all members are equal.”
President Reuven Rivlin speaks at the official Memorial Day state ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, April 21, 2015. (photo credit: Courtesy Channel 2 News)
The fallen “gave their lives not only so that we may survive, but so that we may live… This is our debt to their courage and their lives that are no more,” he adds.
Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, speaking at the state ceremony at the Western Wall, says he “salutes the memory of our comrades in arms, Israel’s fallen who died in the war for the independence of the State of Israel and the security of its people.”
Eisenkot notes that the Western Wall “testifies to the great history of our people, and to the ability of the people of Israel to build and grow, to defend ourselves and to fight for our existence as a united, independent and strong people.
“Our soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder, united in determination and courage, in the face of enemies north and south, and work together by land, air and sea at all times to strengthen the security of the state,” he adds.
More from Rivlin’s speech at the Memorial Day ceremony:
The president says he recently met with a man who lost his son in combat 20 years ago.
“He told me, ‘I do not fear this day. On this day I think about meaning. Every year they talk to us, the bereaved families, about the sorrow and the loss, but we have no need to be reminded of these pains. We carry them with us every day and every night. On this day you must turn to Israeli society as a whole and speak of self-examination with a view to the future, about rebuilding and about hope and about their deaths not being in vain.’
“I wish to honor that father’s request today and address all of us… the people of Israel, of all camps, are bound not just by the bonds of fate but those of purpose and meaning,” Rivlin continues.
He calls on all Israelis to honor the memory of those who died by “fighting for (the country’s) character. For the idea on which the State of Israel was established.”
The name of Arab murder victim Muhammed Abu Khdeir, which was recently added to the Victims of Acts of Terror Memorial on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, will be removed at the request of his family.
Abu Khdeir’s father, Hussein, said earlier that he wasn’t informed of the move to include his son on the memorial, and that he opposed it. In an interview with Ynet, he said that all he wanted was for his son’s killers to be punished.
“That’s the most important thing to me — not the honor bestowed on my son,” he added. “My son is gone. My son was burned and we burned along with him. I want justice, not honor.”
Hussein Abu Khdeir also noted that his son was not an Israeli citizen.
A memorial stone in Hebrew shows the name of Muhammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager from East Jerusalem who was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by Israeli extremists last summer, among names of victims of ‘Acts of Terror’ at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, on April 21, 2015. (photo credit: AFP/Menahem Kahana)
On Tuesday, Abu Khdeir’s name showed up on the government’s online database of terror victims, next to an Israeli flag overlaid with a picture of the Blood of the Maccabees flower, which has come to symbolize the country’s fallen.
In an apparent revenge attack in early July 2014, three Jewish Israeli men allegedly abducted the 16-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem and took him to the Jerusalem Forest, where they beat him with tire irons and — while he was unconscious — burned him to death.
Israel may be the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, but it is also one of the world’s least religious nations, according to a new poll.
The WIN/Gallup poll of 63,898 residents in 65 countries found that 65 percent of Israelis described themselves as either not religious or convinced atheists. Meanwhile, 75% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza viewed themselves as religious, with 18% not religious.
A Haredi Talmud Torah in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit, August 27, 2014 (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)
The poll found that, overall, 63% of people said they are religious. With 61% of its citizens not religious, China was the world’s least religious country, whereas Thailand, with 94% of its citizens religious, was the most.
— JTA
Pentagon officials deny a report in The Guardian that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was seriously wounded in a coalition strike in northern Iraq in March.
US defense officials tell The Daily Beast that there is no information or evidence to suggest that al-Baghdadi was hurt in a March 18 strike, as reported in the British newspaper.
Three Palestinian pedestrians have been injured in the West Bank by a hit-and-run vehicle, police tell Ynet News.
Red Crescent teams are at the scene of the incident near the Samaria village of Nabi Ilyas, outside Qalqilya.
Police and IDF forces are currently searching the area for the vehicle involved in the incident.
Netanyahu condemns the Palestinians for glorifying terrorists and inciting against Israelis.
“Among many of our neighbors, murderers are glorified and hailed, and the more they murder, the more they are glorified. We tell our neighbors — stop the incitement, stop the glorification of murderers. That’s not how peace is made.”
